Currently, bdist_wheel doesn't set the ABI tag properly on Python 2.x - the SOABI symbol it expects to find isn't present. PEP 425 also disclaims dealing with the problem. However, PEP 3149 (which defined SOABI) explains how to define that based on 3 other syconfig flags: Py_DEBUG, Py_UNICODE_SIZE and WITH_PYMALLOC
sysconfig.get_config_var("SOABI") sysconfig.get_config_var("Py_DEBUG") 0 sysconfig.get_config_var("Py_UNICODE_SIZE") 4 sysconfig.get_config_var("WITH_PYMALLOC") 1
With those settings and the platform module (to get the current implementation), it is possible to figure out that the wheel ABI tag should be: cp27mu If Py_DEBUG was true, then it would be "cp27dmu" If WITH_PYMALLOC was false for some reason: "cp27u" And for a narrow Unicode build: "cp27m" That way, the ABI tagging would work properly in 2.x as well, rather than people getting the impression that wheels can't mark the ABI compatibility requirements properly. Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia